Chris Wan, G10, RDF International School Nowadays, people use more plastics than before. As a result, more and more plastic has been produced, but many people don’t realize that a serious problem for our environment is being caused. Last summer, I signed up for a volunteer project which required the participants to do garbage cleaning on an island of Malaysia. After hearing what I had to do in this project, I thought the island might be very dirty and full of plastic garbage. However, when I arrived at the island, I was surprised by how clean the island was! This island is called “Dolphin Island,” a place for vacations. Having visited the beautiful view on the island, I was taken to the back of the holiday village and assigned to collect the trash from the beach. When I took a closer look, I was astonished to find there were so many bottles and bags hidden under the sand. With the sunshine stabbing my skin and the sand burning my feet, I still kept cleaning the beach since I wanted to do my part to make the island a better place. The next day, I went to the place where the plastics were burnt. Choked by the disgusting smell there, I was dismayed to see the pollutants being produced, like toxic ash, dioxins, etc. By doing so, the air quality of Malaysia will decline. Moreover, these pollutants are harmful to people’s bodies and will pose a serious health threat to local communities and marine ecosystems. In my opinion, the relationship between human being and the environment is mutual. People need to change their habit of littering and the government needs to take environmental protection projects seriously since people should think not only of the present but also the future. As a student, after this volunteer activity, I began to pay attention to the solutions of reducing household rubbish and asked my family to do the recycling and rubbish classification with me. If everyone is responsible for the recycling and rubbish classification, I believe our future generations will enjoy more fresh air and clean lands. | 